


No Kick from the Trigger

by Myzic



Series: Whumptober 2020 [2]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Held at Gunpoint, Hurt/Comfort, Not Beta Read, Other, Whumptober 2020, could be whumpier, not that much whump tbh, we die like hyperion mayors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26840338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myzic/pseuds/Myzic
Summary: Something glints from the floor and Peter glances down to see something sticking out of the man’s shoe, the top of a pendant which is obvious from the outline of it against his sock.Peter wants to curse. Amateurs.He doesn’t let anything show on his face, but Blue Tie has followed his gaze to his sock as well. In an instant, he’s reaching for something in the back of his waistline, lifting up the back of his jacket to pull out a blaster.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: Whumptober 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956226
Comments: 6
Kudos: 84





	No Kick from the Trigger

Juno’s black dress is slim, the kind of elegant fit that sits snugly around his thighs and makes Peter want him to wrap those legs around his head and squeeze. 

But Silas Furantur would never think those kinds of things about his lovely husband, no matter how tempting, especially at the semi-public jewelry store they were in. And at this moment, Peter is Silas and he’s nothing if not professional after all. 

So he tucks away those notions and drags his eyes away from the diamond hole in the back of Juno’s dress, displaying a rather distracting canvas of skin.

His own attire is composed of a magenta blazer and dress pants that shine reflectively in the bright lights of the store. He ignores the dull glimmer of his sleeves as he eyes the ring in his hand, scanning its gleaming gold surface. 

The “Third Ring of Neptune” reads its label, for the shimmering sapphires embedded in the outer metal of the ring. Or, well, small glass stones embedded in pyrite. A fake, better than some of the amateur works he’s seen, but nothing more than mediocre. 

“Hey, Mistah Furantur, isn’t this one nice?” Rita hands him a bracelet. One of their nicer pieces certainly, having once been owned by the third princess of Saturn, infamous for her love of diamonds reminiscent of the particularly shiny pieces of white sapphire in this replica. 

“Gorgeous, of course. _The Darwinium_ does live up to its reputation,” Peter butters up the owner of the establishment whose waiting behind the glass displays with a guileless smile, hands sweaty from the stress of what must undoubtedly be the biggest opportunity of his career. 

Peter gently sets it down on the table, and Rita frowns disappointedly for a second before grabbing the next piece. His eyes are drawn to Juno, as they always are, his gaze seeking the ex-detective as they have every day in the last year. 

He is dazzling in his dress, in the diamond necklace that sparkles beneath his neck. His face has an adorable scrunch to it with his eyebrows furrowed at the earrings on the display beneath him.

“Darling,” The endearment falls naturally, sweetly, and something in him rejoices at being able to be able to love Juno in this way. Casually, slowly, without the desperation of fire and death always nipping at their heels. “I think I’ve seen everything I need here if you and Ms. Bell would like to finish up?”

“Yeah, we’ll go do that,” Juno’s tone is casual, practiced and polished, the way Peter showed him, “and if you want to stay and look around a bit more, uh, feel free.” Excellent.

“Hey, Mistah Darwin, you wouldn’t mind if we check out the back before we start doin’ all the signings an’ business stuff do ya?” 

Rita, under the guise of Ms. Bell, the Furantur’s personal accountant, plays her part with alacrity. She’s well-suited to the role, having a head for maths and legal jargon that Peter would struggle to emulate in her place.

“Yes, absolutely, we have some of our more precious items in the back, for only our most distinguished customers like yourselves.” 

If the backroom is anything like the front, it isn’t saying much, but Peter nods thankfully at the owner and watches Juno and Rita head towards a white door leading to the back room.

Their comms stay silent as they do. Buddy trusts them enough that the others are content to sit and watch this part, now that the negotiations of the contract had been dealt with, all that was left was to throw the unknowing fence owner a bone every now and then and rob him for everything he was worth.

It would be easier for Rita to access the system once she was in the back with the personal computer of  _ The Darwinium _ at her fingertips, and Juno there to create a convenient distraction for Mr. Darwin himself. In the meantime, Peter is left with the store manager, one Vega Aldebaran with his slicked-back blonde hair, and eager-to-please smile. 

Peter slides over to the left a little to look at a different display, this one full of long dangling emerald earrings, glittering diamonds, and topaz hoops. 

“Can I have a look at that pair?” He points to a delicate set of studs, sterling silver, the genuine material as far as his eye can discern, and delicate wire wrapped in the shape of a rose. 

“Here you go,” The glass of the case slides back into its wooden frame as it reveals the many glittering articles on the inside. 

He makes sure his hands only briefly brush over the fronts of the smaller set up of earrings so Vega doesn’t notice the earrings vanishing from the front of their displays. Peter fits the large pair of emerald statement earrings into the seams of his cuffs and manages some pink diamond cuffs into his left sleeve along with clear peridot studs. And the rose studs, obviously.

Usually, Juno isn’t one much for extravagant gifts and had only acquiesced to the glittering piece on his neck for the sake of their upper-class appearances. Peter wants to shower him in gems and flowers and every earthly good he could get his hands on, but Juno won’t appreciate any of those things, so ultimately they aren’t worth much.

Most of the time all he asks for are kisses, soft and chaste in the morning, and deep and soul-wrenching during the night, shared cups of coffee and tea respectively, and a head against his shoulder on stream nights. He asks for the most mundane of moments, and Peter is grateful for it, for every part of him he gets, but especially for those that he has never been able to touch. Until Juno Steel, of course. 

Sometimes, it feels as though everything in the past twenty years has been ‘until Juno Steel.’ Like all the moments that came before were just leading up to right now, when he can finally say he is content. True contentedness, not the facsimile of it he’d achieved during the long years of living heist to heist, faking everything from the way he walked to what kind of handle he preferred on his bathroom door. 

It is a ridiculous thought, he knows. Peter’s relationship with Juno is not the result of an owed debt the universe has granted him. There is no guarantee of anything unless you work for it. Not even with promises of all the stars in the universe ahead of you. Still, he cannot help but cherish each day with Juno at his side and the odd little assortment that has somehow become their family. 

He realizes he’s grinning to himself, that the right side of his mouth is slightly upturned, and he smooths his expression once more. The smiles and soft feeling in his heart can wait until the job is done. Back to Silas Furantur.

“I think I’ll ask some of your customers about their experience with the service here,” Peter knows his smile is a little menacing, particularly when he wants it to be, such as now. His estimation of his own abilities is confirmed once more as Aldebaran’s neck gleams with a thin layer of sweat that is not a product of the lights above. 

Silas Furantur has the propensity to make people exceedingly uncomfortable while remaining unknowing of his own presence. 

But everything about Peter Nureyev is intentional, down to the way he makes Aldebaran nod, nerves badly hidden on his face. His job is potentially on the line here, if the contract falls through.

There are two men across the shop, both of them in suits, but not the kind he himself is outfitted in. Their suits are the black attire of businessmen, and unfamiliar to them, given the younger one’s fidgeting with the cuff of his sleeve. They wear the suits stiffly, and Peter’s been keeping an eye on them since they stepped into the shop thirty minutes ago.

Related, given the slope of their noses which stand out obtrusively from their faces in a particularly noticeable fashion. Bags under their eyes, both of them, and guilty countenances, which doesn’t bode well for the trepidation in his stomach. Peter can’t speak into his comms right now, not while the manager has his attention focused solely on him and the two cousins, siblings maybe, watching him walk up.

He pretends to tuck a piece of hair behind his ear as he turns on his comms’ audio and offers them a charming smile.

“That is quite the ring you have there,” He’s holding a bulky piece, multiple larger stones gathered in purple hues around the apex point of the band. The man in the blue tie looks down at it distractedly.

“It’s really nice, yeah,” his voice is nothing but cordial, perfectly formal, “thinking of picking it up before I head out.”

Something glints from the floor and Peter glances down to see something sticking out of the man’s shoe, the top of a pendant which is obvious from the outline of it against his sock. 

Peter wants to curse.  _ Amateurs _ .

He doesn’t let anything show on his face, but Blue Tie has followed his gaze to his sock as well. In an instant, he’s reaching for something in the back of his waistline, lifting up the back of his jacket to pull out a blaster.

Ridiculous, novices the both of them. If they had bothered to do any research, they would’ve realized _The Darwinium_ prized itself on being exempt from robberies and stick-ups because of their disrupter which disabled all plasma blasters in the vicinity of the store. Note, the idiotic lack of guards for this reason.

Except, Peter realizes with a slow, sinking feeling, the Carte Blanche had already disabled the disabler so it would be a clear shot for Rita to transmit the businesses creds out of the internal computer and off-planet to a few of Buddy’s dummy accounts. So these blasters were, in fact, very capable of blasting at the moment.

“Micah, what the hell!” his purple tied compatriot exclaims, pulling out his own blaster as he does, “This isn’t what we planned.”

“Pete, what’s happening in there?” Buddy’s voice rings in his comms at the same time Vega raises his voice.

“Gentlemen, as you’ve brought unidentified blasters into the shop, I must ask you to leave—” 

“This one pegged us, Edmund, he was getting suspicious. What was I supposed to do?” Micah says reproachfully to the frustrated sigh of what must be his brother given the depth of his apparent exasperation.

“You two should leave the premises—”

Micah takes aim at the floor and releases a charge of arcing blue electricity that leaves a dark, smoldering spot on the previously spotless linoleum floors, a shriek from an elderly man in the corner of the room following its pathway. He aims his blaster at the manager who shuts his mouth in an almost amusing manner. It would be more so if Peter didn’t currently have a blaster level with his forehead. And oh, delightful, the illegal kind without the universally mandated stun setting. 

Peter slowly raises his hands. With any luck, the sound of blaster fire will have alerted Juno and Rita to their plight and allowed them to escape with the warning. 

“Ransom, can you hear us out there? Say something for god’s sake,” Vespa’s irritated tone buzzes in his eardrum, and he complies.

“I don’t believe the demonstration was needed. We’re perfectly willing to go along with your demands,” he states mildly. 

“Shut up,” Edmund growls, “you’re a hostage now, act like it.”

“The transaction has been finished, Ransom.” Jet’s voice is a grumble exacerbated by the low buzz of his comms, but it is grounding as ever, “We’re going to call the authorities. Buddy is on the comms with the others to see if they can help you, but until then I must ask you to remove yourself from the situation as quickly and safely as possible.”

Edmund gestures to Micah with the hand that isn’t preoccupied with his blaster, “Go get the ones in the back, there might be some more wares we haven’t seen.” One hand on a blaster focused on the hostages, attention split between the job and managing his brother. Peter feels offended he’s being forced into their little patchwork plan, insulted at the sloppiness of their pseudo heist.

Micah heads towards the back and Edmund gestures with his gun at the elderly man across the shop.

“Hey, get over here,” How tasteless, no class in it at all, “everyone sit down, and start giving me your comms.” The blaster trains itself on Peter as he says it, “No shenanigans from you or I’ll,” he waves his gun in a rather unintimidating manner.

Peter reaches up to remove his comm and places it in his outstretched hand. Micah, across the room, opens the back door and Juno’s hand reaches out from its frame to snatch his collar roughly. The door shuts behind Micah, and Edmund glances over nervously, the urge to help his brother clearly warring with his unwillingness to leave his hostages alone.

He can hear muffled thuds from behind the back door, the sound of flesh hitting flesh. Hard. Peter can only hope they’re on the giving end of those hits rather than the receiving end. A feeling of restlessness, uselessness makes him feel twitchy. He wants to be back there, at Rita’s side, having Juno’s back with his own knife, but instead, he’s here playing hostage to a half-rate crook.

The sounds stop for a millisecond. What’s happening? Are they hurt? Peter wraps his hand around the handle of the knife in the inside of his blazer nervously. There’s sweat, slick between the creases of his fingers as he fits his fingers into their familiar grooves.

“Micah? All good in the back there?”

A shot echoes from the back, unexpected, sudden. A choked gasp of pain and Peter’s on his feet before he realizes what words are being pulled from his throat.

“Juno,” He breathes, sounding like he’s been punched in the gut, which matches how he feels at the moment. He imagines Juno, flat on his back, bleeding from a scorching black hole weeping in his chest. It’s an image all too easily brought to the forefront of his mind, supplemented by weeks of torture and Juno lying limp in his lap, eyes bleeding and face pale. 

He whirls around, taking advantage of the robber’s distraction at the blaster fire and drives his knife into his arm in the next second, pinning him as he screams, to the wooden corner of the display case. 

Peter’s at the doorway in the next second, his world possibly lying in pieces on the other side. It is a position he never wanted to be in again and he feels every bit as desperate as he was. 

“Juno, are you alright?” He opens the door, breathless in terror for the second time in his life that he’ll find Juno’s dead body waiting. 

Instead, there is one of the amateur robbers clutching the side of his foot, rump to the floor, and Juno, standing with a blaster in his hand above his groaning form. Then, he is wrapped up in Peter’s arms as he clutches him to his chest. The action is careless, everything set aside for the hammering of his heart and the feel of Juno’s broad shoulders under the force of his embrace.

“Uh, honey?” Juno’s arms are around his own form now in a bewildered but welcoming hug of his own, and Peter can tell he’s confused, but that can wait for when the image of Juno’s slumped body has faded from his mind. 

“Just, concerned for a moment, darling,” Peter squeezes tighter and Juno relaxes into the embrace. He emerges reluctantly after a few moments, taking the chance to cup the detective’s jaw softly. Peter would love to kiss his beautiful, gorgeous, wonderfully flushed and  _ alive _ face, but—

Juno pulls him down by grasping onto his tie and then his lips are searching against his own, sweet and tender. Peter can’t help but melt into it, soft in his own relief. He reaches up to put his hands flat behind Juno’s ears.

“a-HEM!” They break contact as Rita makes an extremely fake coughing noise. “Not that you two kissing isn’t real sweet and makes me very happy, but maybe it ain’t the moment right this second, Boss,” she pauses for a moment, “es.”

Peter straightens his tie and sees Juno press down his dress as well. The owner is sitting, pale, and drawn in the corner of the room.

“Yes, perhaps it’d be best for us to resume business a later day, Mr. Darwin,” Peter leans down to push a moaning Micah against the wall and slips the loot out of his pockets and socks while he’s at it. Not that he’ll miss the loss. “It’s been quite a trying time and I think I would like to go home and simply lie down awhile.” Peter is a master at his craft, and the words he said would sound true no matter what they were, but these feel a little more genuine on his lips.

“You heard the hubby, we’ll see you when we see you, Darwin,” Juno waves politely as the three of them stroll quickly out of the back room and into the main shop.

“Oh, absolutely, um and you have my contact information for when you want to meet up again,” Despite his shaky smile, Mr. Darwin is quick to respond, obviously uneager to let his possible benefactors slip down the drain. But they are already gone.

Peter dislodges his knife from Edmund who's looking paler from the pain and blood loss, apparently having been unable to remove it himself and retrieves it with a bit of upper body strength. It slides out from his upper forearm and a few inches up from the display with a good bit of force, and perhaps Peter had put a little too much into the swing. 

He ransacks Edmund’s pockets subtly as he does and otherwise ignores his pained moan when he slides down the side of the display, a layer of translucent blood against its glass pane turning the shine of the lights red on the jewelry’s metal. 

Vega is helping their elderly co-hostage to his feet and eyes him with something approaching fear. Has he gone overboard? No, Edmund is still alive after all.

“Is that everything, babe?” Juno is waiting for him at the doorway, Rita having started to head back to the landing plateau for the Carte Blanche.

Peter meets him there and twines their hands together as they walk, relishing the feeling of warm fingers interlocked with his own, “That should be it, love. I believe I have left with the prettiest thing in there.” 

“Mmm, I noticed your five-finger discount in the second-hand bin,” Juno’s smile is teasing but his blush reddens his cheeks even with his words.

  
  
  
  


While they’re waiting for the ship to lower, Peter gives Rita a handful of earrings, rings, necklaces, and quite a few articles he doesn’t remember actually taking. He keeps the triangular emerald ones for himself at a later date.

“Yes! Thanks, Mistah Ransom, these are keepers for sure,” and she gives the jewelry a quick look, but spends far less time eyeing them then he thought she might. Her gaze fixes on them instead.

“Juno?”

“Yeah, Nureyev?” They’re standing below the engines of the Carte Blanche, where the winds blow so hard Peter’s blazer whips around him and their words are torn away from their lips before anyone but themselves can hear them.

“I love you, so much, I think I might die of it.” Juno’s new rose studs glint under the lights of their flying home and Peter wonders how long it’ll be until he notices his new present.

They can’t hear anything except themselves. And Rita, who has emitted a high pitched squeal to Juno’s left.

“You’d better not, I was promised the stars and,” He feels his own smile bloom across his face, uncontrollably fond, “I don’t think I want to see them without you to show me.” 

He looks forward to it.

**Author's Note:**

> Nureyev betrayal side plot? I’ve never heard of them.
> 
> Hey. hey. hey. Furantur means steal in Latin. That's right, I can do sneaky plot stuffff  
> Also, me faking technobabble for everything I’m worth.
> 
> If you want to come scream with me about these idiots I'm @themagicmistress on Tumblr!


End file.
